


"But first they must catch you..."

by RainofLittleFishes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bee POV, Fear, Small Sollux fits in unexpected places, Smollux, Sollux’s Bees are Also Snobs, Sollux’s Bees are Badass, helmhunters, mostly off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 11:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5126726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux is small for his age. His bees are small for their computing power. </p><p>These two things just might save his life when his hive tower gets hit by helmhunters.</p><p>*</p><p>Inspired by SybLaTortue's adorable and heartbreaking picture of tiny Sollux hiding in his beehouse mainframe:</p><p>
  <a href="http://syblatortue.tumblr.com/post/126393168856/ceekari-asked-smollux-sketch-hiding-in-smol/">if he's found at least he'll have mind honey on hand to flip out as a last resort</a>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	"But first they must catch you..."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SybLaTortue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SybLaTortue/gifts).



*

There is no hunting like the hunting of trolls, and those who have hunted armed trolls long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

\- Troll Hemingway, slam poetry artist and war hero

*

There is nothing to helming. You just stand within your wires… and bleed.

\- Troll Hemingway, slam poetry artist, war hero (revoked), and helmsman

*

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.

\- Troll Hemingway, slam poetry artist, war hero (revoked), helmsman (escaped), and violent pacifistic rogue psionic revolutionary who died on his own goddamn terms

*

*

*

 

The True Hive is on alert, actively engaged in defense preparation. Imminent intrusion is expected.

Workers arriving from Outside with their payloads of pollen and nectar disburden and do not leave again. The greater dwelling’s silent alarms are activated, one cavernous domain to the next, the end user chemical alarms racing behind the near instantaneous bee Hive communications through the towering constructed mountain of cobbled together hives, territories tightly abutting and sometimes overlapping with other Hives’ and other end users’.

Hive patrols nightly examine resources and the precise limits of territory, subtle reconnaissance and brief battles the Hives’ nightly negotiation.

The bees of the True Hive, inheritors of a long lineage of fierce warriors and efficient workers, do not take prisoners. But tonight there will be no internal disputes among those claiming rightful residence to the mountain.

Though no intruders have yet breached the True Hive own cavern’s defenses on the highest level, sub-adult end users hunting pre-adolescent end users prowl the mountain’s shared connecting passages and raid individual domains. Seven levels below, on the ground level, a pre-adolescent end user has been extracted from its hive. There were auditory distress calls and then silence. The Hive of that domain is unsettled, reporting a 27.2% confirmed loss of defenders, and a further 48.6% as yet unaccounted for. It is a small Hive, its end user only recently having successfully courted and relocated it, and most of its energies were devoted to nutrient retrieval and computing, nursery, and honey production. With so few adults, the current batch of larvae will be winnowed unless another end user is procured. 

The True Hive, five times larger and of a smaller, faster coastal strain, at war last week with the Hive in that end user’s domain, neither celebrates nor mourns. That end user is lost. Perhaps that Hive will swarm elsewhere, perhaps it will allow another end user to court it, perhaps it will die. The True Hive does not contemplate such things, the event being notable only for the data mined and potential warning.

Not all end users can fly. Not all end users can understand simple beenary or convey electric currents. The crippled ones will raid to steal the normal ones while they’re still young and malleable, final differentiations as yet unset. They build mobile hives and keep them captive in the cold nothingness outside the sky, the place the end users call ‘hell’.

The destruction below is no business of the True Hive unless the hunters disrupt the True Hive’s processes. Alternia is full of predators. The True Hive is full of warriors. They will defend their Hive.

Inside the True Hive’s own domain, Routine has been disrupted. It will be a very long night, with no further supplies to show for it. Perhaps this makes the workers more ornery for it. Perhaps not. They are, after all, bees. They do not express emotional vagaries, only proper absolutes. Honey production will be an estimated 35% behind initial quarter-perigee estimates, final figures to be determined at the conclusion of this incident. In the process of calculation is leakage, as the Hive has been opened, mainframe wiggled sideways, and an outer wall pried open and wedged shut again. 86 storage cells have burst under the clumsy pressure, 34 more are suspected of compromised structural integrity. If any other force had inflicted such damage, an appropriate aerial force would have already been dispatched to drive off the intruder, secondary objective to assure no chance of a future raid. The True Hive does not willingly allow enemies to regroup and attack again.

The uninvited intruder within the True Hive’s mainframe is not _precisely_ an invader. The circumstance is unprecedented, the terminology unset. The Hive is still evaluating options.

There are auditory distress calls from both of the pre-adolescent end users on the third level, and prolonged conflict noises before hunting silence rules the night again.

The second and fifth levels are empty of residential end users tonight, those Hives report, while the fourth, sixth, and eighth now have only one each. A newly arrived acquisition technician relays that on the sixth level, an end user flew out the Outside access hatch and was grounded by a swarm of projectiles. On the scale of the end users, the mountain is surrounded. This data point is taken into the Hive and regarded. Hives below, however inferior, have been unable to dissuade the raids. Options are limited.

On the seventh level, one of the two end users ceased functioning nine nights ago of infected wounds taken in conflict outside the mountain. That Hive has been dwindling into a likely final torpor, bees judged to be contaminated with the same fungal agent and quarantined by the mutual judgement of the other Hives. The remaining seventh level end user is of no interest as it does not maintain a Hive.

The eighth level Hives are not on communication terms with one another, even when the mutual enemy is greater. Bees do not forgive. The True Hive does not forget. There will be no further warnings once the lone end user on the sixth level goes down. Both sixth level Hives are a lazy highland forest strain, almost stingless, leisurely nectar gathers, easily courted, doomed.  

The True Hive’s end user, successful suitor, and provider of provender in lean times, is a pre-adolescent of the end user species. The True Hive’s end user is brilliant, for its kind, if perturbingly regularly erratic, and the symbiosis has been beneficial for both sides, as the True Hive judges such things.

The True Hive is precise and would accept nothing less than True Efficiency in a courting end user. Bees do not express affection. To acknowledge efficiency is sufficient onto overflowing. The True Hive came to this domain of the Queen’s determining and will not tolerate involuntary relocation.

*

The primary end user crouches inside the True Hive and shivers as if to generate heat. The internal humidity is excessive and workers have been dispatched to remove the leaked fluid under its optical and olfactory sensation units to correct internal humidity levels.

 

Observations:

Primary end user organism’s chemical signals and metabolic rates indicate distress.

Respiration is accelerated.

Circulation rate indicates desire to engage in flight behavior.

There is a threat outside the Hive, below and rising, and Outside. (Alert: End user flight not sanctioned!)

Fight protocols are at alert but not engaged.

 

Evaluation:

Organism beneficial to continued Hive existence and efficiency. Nursery attendants rerouted to engage in caretaking behaviors.

Hiveframe structural integrity acceptable, outer protective seal compromised. Engaging in repairs.

Sending technicians to salvage spilled honey.

Sending technicians to obscure substrate markings from mainframe’s relocation.

Potential threat judged beyond ideal radius to be effectively driven off or destroyed without leaving unacceptable gaps in the Hive’s mainframe defenses.  Threat distance decreasing. Raising alarm levels.

Primary end user must not be allowed to endanger itself, or the Hive. The Hive considers its survival nonnegotiable, just below that of the Hive’s own.

Alert: End user flight not sanctioned!

*

The True Hive’s primary end user regularly harvests the Hive’s laboriously produced honey for the consumption of the beast on the mountain apex, some sort of wildly differentiated nursery technician with which it maintains some form of caretaking relationship even past its larval stage. The beast does not produce anything, nor engage in any labor. The Hive is uncertain as to its purpose. The end user exhibits a peculiar emotional attachment. More study is required.

The end user does not consume the honey itself, not does it allow such waste as part of the nightly cycle. The end user’s activity fluctuations have been extensively documented, though they are as yet not understood. This invasion and concealing behavior is unprecedented. This situation has not previously occurred, even in the long-term memory banks, ancient prize of hundreds of generations of Queens, almost all dwelling on the coasts. Perhaps it is a vagary of the inland territory. The Hive dislikes such peculiarities and the Queen may well advise future generations to avoid such, however brilliant the enticement. Or perhaps the True Hive will continue its mission, to grow, to flourish, to document and conquer. The True Hive’s end user continues to exhibit abilities sufficient to offset caution at the alien environment. There are few coastal Hives among the inland territories and the territory is ripe for expansion of the True Lines.

*

You are huddled within you apiary mainframe, terrified and still astonished that you’re not already dead.

Your bees are smart, deadly fast, and aggressive, on the ‘net or in your hive and they’re not much for sharing close spaces. Usually it’s you in your chair and the bees in the mainframe or traveling in and out of the ventilation hatch. You can share space with them as they buzz past and sometimes check out what you’re doing, or sample what you’re eating, but you’ve been stung more than twice when they decided you were being too nosy in return. They tolerate your bi-weekly honey raid, and have mostly stopped exacting revenge, so long as you keep a strict schedule. Schedules are not really your strength, but with the unfortunate alternative, you’ve generally managed, and it’s been almost two perigees since you’ve been stung. You’re generally smug at how fierce they are, pwning your neighbors or other trolling targets, and Aradia’s generally smug at how she convinced you to court a coastal hive from some drippy rainforest full of terrifying fungus, and your bees are just generally smug. You are usually not afraid of your bees. Tonight will be a toss-up between what you fear most and what you maybe _should_ have feared most.

What’s the more horrifying doom… slow death by helm or fast suffocating death by hive, possibly with extra mindhoney and explosion sauce on top? The jury’s still out. Making nooses. Frick, you could use TZ’s confidence right now, or even some stupid dare from KK. Bees can smell fear, but _trolls can too_ and you don’t know anything about the raiders except that they’re big and fast and took out Wohter Pleekt when he went out his sixth floor ventilation hatch.

You want to close your eyes and pretend this isn’t happening, but you can’t bear to ignore the chance of more information, snatches of beenary swirling around you, over you, as hundreds of your bees work, sealing the disturbed frame wall, the ruptured honeycombs, convening to relay information and flying out under orders. You can order your bees from your husktop interface or with psionics, though the latter isn’t as precise. You can’t exactly fit a device in here and you don’t dare do so much as spark. You are at the mercy of either the helmhunters or your bees. You have chosen your bees. You are not dead yet.

There are bees all over you and the hum inside the mainframe is so loud it feels like your brain is vibrating, your horns are confused as to if the space is claustrophobic, cozy, or almost solidly packed. You are not dead yet, which you might yet regret. If your bees weren’t such aggressive buggers you’d think that they were imitating Aradia papping you, creeping legs crawling over your hair and face, clustered under your eyes and nose. You’re terrified, Ardley Oxrott on the first floor is, _was_ , a full sweep older than you and not as psionically active, but she could have wiped the floor with you one handed with her shoelaces tied together. _The helmhunters took her out in less than thirty seconds_.

You are congested in your fear, and you don’t dare move for fear of making noise, provoking your bees, or disturbing the frame wall you were only sort of able to put back up. Your mouth is open, just enough, and you pant as silently as you can, the heavy reek of honey everywhere. Somewhere in the back of your mind, beneath the panic, behind the part of you counting off the time as forcibly slow heavy breaths, some rogue thought reminds you that when you survive this, _if_ you survive this, you’re going to need to clean up and you can’t waste mindhoney. Your lusus is going to have to lick you clean. If you survive. If you don’t blow the mainframe, your hive, and your chances with a stray bit of mindhoney. If the helmhunters don’t off your lusus like they did Oxrott’s sabertoothedboarMom. What is your life that you’re hoping for a wiggler tongue bath?

*

The disharmonious crash of the primary end user’s primary domain delineation is the first signal among the set of predetermined stimuli to invoke the Hive’s more visible outer defense.

Formation two. Intimidation. Set primary and secondary territory delineations. Commence strife at secondary. Commence full attack at primary.

The True Hive swarms.

*

The door crashes open and you almost, _almost_ inhale too loudly, have to concentrate to exhale, to not cough. The noise is muffled by the wax and the vibration of wings, but it’s all too clear at the same time, a thin sheet of wax and steel the only thing between you and some backwoods pirated helm surgery, dead, or as good as, at five sweeps. Worse, probably.

You’ve never liked hearing the imminently doomed, but tonight it might have saved your worthless life.

The bees in the mainframe are loud, but not loud enough to conceal the agitated swarming outside it. Your bees are the fastest in the hivetower, smaller than most, purple like some sort of bizarre highblood strain. Their stings _hurt_ , and, so long as they hit tender areas, eyes, eyelids, ears, the edges of skin plates, etc., their stingers don’t get stuck, so they can do it again, and again, and again. Not a single one has stung you tonight. If you survive this, you’re going to order a fricking _pail_ of their favorite flower seed and guerrilla garden every bit of dirt between here and that stupid meadow they spend so much of their time comparing everything else to.

“Cripes! Not worth it.” This is a whiny voice, though the floor shakes with heavy footfalls. They retreat from the hiveframe, bees in pursuit. You can hear slapping and more stomping and you hold your breath for a moment, counting them off. How many of your bees are dead?

“No way, this is the prize haul, this wiggler’s ‘net sync levels are so high, he _has_ to be a proto-helm. You don’t want to stick your hand in weird bees, fine, check the other rooms. The haul gets split nine ways even, Team One already caught two wigglers while we covered their asses, the three outside caught a flier and kept all the exits covered. You want your share, _haul ass and find the prize_.” Voice Two is female, uncompromising. You hate her in a platonic way that wants to set her on fire and roast Voice One, aka Heavy Treads, over it.

There’s a stamp of a heeled boot and a few seconds later you can read the combined casualty reports in beenary. _Thirty-nine stings inflicted in initial confrontation, twenty-two scouts dead, three injured, survival unlikely, two intruders have aggressed to the space of six footpod lengths and have retreated to twelve, more data to be delivered for analysis…_

Footsteps cross the floor to the food preparation block. Heavy Treads makes his way to your ‘coon block. There are crashes and slams, you breathe and try to match objects to them, the only control you have is _not panicking_. Just breathe. Don’t think about what they’re finding, what might betray your hiding place. Aradia is safe. You repeat it to yourself. Aradia is safe. ( _No one is ever safe.)_ You don’t know how many there are, but you do know you’re surrounded. You watch your bees. There are three hunters in your hive they tell each other, let you see from their reports. Where the frick is the third?

“Wiggler’s five, right?” Voice One, still somehow whiny, from the food block.

A third voice replies, probably from the same block, hoarse and lower, harder to make out, getting closer. “Yes… nothing left … in which a five sweep old might hide. We have completed searches of the recuperacoon, kitchen cabinets, closets, all the rooms, game grub tanks and vats. I personally disassembled the lounging plane and the pile. He is simply not here. The spotters are certain, no one went out the windows.” The third voice is somehow obviously highblooded, but evidently not afraid to ruffle through your gamegrubs and pile. Your bilesacks heave, as if someone reached into you and casually rearranged your organs and you only now just noticed.

“What about the hiveframe?” Voice Two, leisurely, cruel, with an edge of excitement like she’s not sure if she wants to see your bees die or Heavy Treads get it, but both might be fun. She’s been pacing just outside the twelve footpod radius the entire time. You keep waiting for her to rush you, not sure if it’s you thinking it, or some synthesis of the hive communications. You platonically love your bees. You will never say another bad thing about the buggers. For at _least_ a week. You promise.

“It does not appear to be large enough to conceal a juvenile of his age, not once one accounts for the absolute minimum of bee infrastructure.” Voice Three, as if he’s already given up on finding you, is merely waiting for Voice Two to agree. Yes. _Please_.

“Maybe he’s small for his age,” Voice Two again, and if it’s terrifyingly accurate, it’s mostly idle, like she’s looking for an excuse to make Heavy Treads get a face full of bees

“My lusus has taking dumps bigger than that hiveframe.” Heavy Treads. You have no doubt, one of them clearly managed to pupate.

Your hiveframe isn’t the biggest any more than your bees are but it’s the fastest and the most _vicious_ , and if you get through this you’re going to show them as much. They called your bees weird. It is on. (It was already “on” but somehow you’re switching from terrified to terrified and angry. It’s not a good combination. It burns and heaves, in your guts, and in you pan, and it makes you want to do something stupid. What would Aradia do? Tell you to cool your sparks and _plan_. Just breathe. What the frick are ‘net sync levels, how are they measured, and how did you not notice the trail of grubloaf crumbles you evidently left behind?)

“Such a lusus’s grub, Knucls, always ‘my lusus this’ and ‘my lusus that’. You want to tell us what your lusus said about whiny grubs?” Voice Three. You hate him, but he’s given you a name, if you survive this, and you actually might, you may be able to track them down _and make sure they don’t come back_.

“You want to stick your head in a strange hiveframe, Serrtk? Be my guest. Be sure to take a deep breath when the bees boil over you, I always wanted to know what happens if _you_ inhaled some.” More whiny voice.

The bees report that Heavy Treads, or rather, ‘ _Knucls’_ is teal, and you watch them dance out his sign. Positive identification confirmed, tracing contacts. ‘Serrtk’ is dark blue, sign confirmed. They dance out Voice Two’s sign, and that she’s another dark blue. No name, the search will take longer, but she’s probably linked to them somehow on the ‘net. You’ll still need to find “Team One” and the three spotters. At least. This was _planned_. You wonder if any of your neighbors skipped out tonight _because they knew_. You wonder if any of them “fortuitously survived” for the same reason. You’re in hostile territory. You’ve _always_ _been_ in hostile territory. Just because this didn’t happen before wasn’t proof you were hot shit, it was proof you weren’t worth the trouble yet.

“Boys?” Voice Two is clearly the boss. That wasn’t annoyed auspistice.

“The clothes in the closet are standard for a five sweep old, he wouldn’t fit anyhow. The wiggler simply is not present, whatever ‘net activity might have been detected.” Voice Three, _Serrtk_.

“We’ve got three larval helms and Techie says the drones are four minutes out. Time to go,” decrees Voice Two, and her heeled boots cross the floor, followed by heavy treads and lighter steps.

You hold your breath. There is no door slam, your door probably isn’t attached any more. You count off slow breaths, even counts to two hundred. Your bees flash code to one another and you as the hunters descend, as acquisition technicians venture out to locate and make any last observations on the spotters, until finally, finally, there’s no one left but you, and your bees, and two hours after this all started they make it clear that you need to vacate their premises and maybe go do a little hunting of your own.

You don’t move. You can’t move. Your legs and arms and back are on fire with your position, but you just… can’t. You should just close your eyes and… a bee stings you on the ear, and you jolt, your eyelids slam open.

A communications technician buzzes in front of you twice, slowly, trying to get your attention, and flashes a message, insultingly slowly. “Oxygen levels suboptimal, ventilation technicians going off duty. YOU (and they use this obnoxious compressed version of your name that’s basically S-U-X) must exit hive.”

You push at the hive wall, clumsy and when the wax seal first gives you drink in the fresh air like you’ve been underwater. Yeah, okay, that would have been a stupid way to die.

You emerge from the hive like a clumsy pupa, tracking mindhoney and trying not to break any more cells then you have to until finally you remember you could just apply even pressure with your psionics and you do. There are a line of tiny bee corpses arranged across your husktop platform, but the hive sounds just like it usually does, actively working but not on overdrive. You count the tiny corpses twice but can’t quite remember the final count. Your bees are already busy responding to this incursion, and if they don’t like to be judged emotional, they certainly seem miffed.

You can hear attempting-to-fix-it sounds from the levels below and your lusus is roaring on the roof. You should pretend you’re still mysteriously absent, start hunting down threats, starting with what this ‘net sync thing is and who’s been tracking you, but, as mindless as a fungal zombie, you shuffle up to the roof to check on your lusus and get a humiliating tongue bath while your bees do a little reconnaissance of their own. They are good bees. The best bees. Smug buggers.

A fricking _pail_ of seeds, you promise yourself. (You know nothing of gardening.) Maybe KN has some advice. Maybe you won’t tell her how much you want to plant them in a few fresh corpses. Nah. KN would understand. And AA will help, of course.

You reach the roof, and your lusus stops howling, lunges for you. Your head spins as you get swept up, thoroughly inspected. The night stars are strangely beautiful tonight. You close your eyes as twin tongues descend upon you.

Someone out there knows you’re helmbait. You always knew, you never expected otherwise any more than you ever wanted it, but somehow, now that it’s real and you’ve survived your first brush with it, you’re surprised how much you want to fight.

You are never safe. You relax anyway, the dual tones of your lusus crooning letting you pretend.

*

_Positive identification confirmed. Ten end users marked for termination. Subjects nine and three ranked most dangerous. Commencing extermination measures?_

_Affirmative._

The True Hive is in Accord. It will continue its mission, to grow, to flourish, to document and conquer.

_Symbiotic end user has been chosen. Substitutions will not be tolerated._

*

**Author's Note:**

> Now with amazing addendum from SybLaTortue:
> 
>  
> 
> [ByclopsDad is quite certain that it is bathtime](http://syblatortue.tumblr.com/post/132459698261/)


End file.
